Capcom crushes replay value of new game by making saved games permanent

Capcom has disabled the ability to delete your saved game in Resident Evil: …

When you open your brand-new copy of Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D today, you may find something interesting in the manual. "Note: Saved data on this software cannot be reset," you are warned. When you play the game and your progress is saved, there is no way to take it back. That is your game forever.

Let me explain why this is so infuriating if you're unclear on just how hostile this is to gamers. Once you've beaten the game, you can't erase your progress and start over. If you want to loan the game to a friend, they won't be able to start their own game from the beginning. You may be able to trade the game into a store or sell it, but I wouldn't suggest buying it from someone used, since you won't be able to start from the beginning and unlock all the content yourself.

"Secondhand game sales were not a factor in this development decision, so we hope that all our consumers will be able to enjoy the entirety of the survival-action experiences that the game does offer," Capcom said in a statement given to Giant Bomb.

"In Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, all mission progress is saved directly to the Nintendo 3DS cartridge, where it cannot be reset," the statement continued. "The nature of the game invites high levels of replayability in order to improve mission scores. In addition, this feature does not remove any content available for users."

If this isn't to hurt the resell value, why else would you do this? Also, this hurts everyone who buys a copy of the game, and significantly harms the long-term replayability of the title. I often wipe the saved game files of my portable games to start fresh, and this new "feature" makes that impossible.

While I love a lot of Capcom games, they are really, really out of touch with reality most of the time. Sometimes that ends up making awesome games, other times it just ends up with their universally awful and awkward UIs on a disaster.

While there's next to no chance I would want to reset my game, taking away that option is a shit move.

You can't start a "New Game" and overwrite it? Many games in the past have had no way to reset (a good example of this is Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, which was an excellent game by the way) as well as most games that had only one save spot on the cartridge (the original Final Fantasy on NES and The World Ends With You on the Nintendo DS come to mind).

If there's no way to restart the game on command (even through an in-menu option?)... then yeah it's a pretty dick move.

That's a bit of a shitty marketing ploy. Regardless of what they say, the entire industry is, and has been, up in arms over re-sale of games, and I can bet this move is aimed at that. There is absolutely no reason to code this feature into a game, other than to restrict the attraction of buying it used. Worse, Gamestop doesn't have much of a return policy for used games, so if an uninformed buyer picks this up and the previous owner beat the entire game....that's literally wasted money.

Fact is, they aren't entitled to profiting from the same copy of the game twice. They aren't buying back the used game, so why should they get an additional cut of the second/third/n'th sale (this relates more to the codes used for online play, making you pay twice, essentially, if you buy a used game, but still).

That's a bit of a shitty marketing ploy. Regardless of what they say, the entire industry is, and has been, up in arms over re-sale of games, and I can bet this move is aimed at that. There is absolutely no reason to code this feature into a game, other than to restrict the attraction of buying it used. Worse, Gamestop doesn't have much of a return policy for used games, so if an uninformed buyer picks this up and the previous owner beat the entire game....that's literally wasted money.

Fact is, they aren't entitled to profiting from the same copy of the game twice. They aren't buying back the used game, so why should they get an additional cut of the second/third/n'th sale (this relates more to the codes used for online play, making you pay twice, essentially, if you buy a used game, but still).

I would have to think/hope gamestop would put disclaimers or tell the customer if they were going to buy one of these used games. Or if they wanted to take a stand, refuse to carry the game new in their stores.

It seems like this is just a part of the growing trend of game designers to tell gamers how they want the games to be played. The linear track, specific scenes the moment your feet cross a point (and infinitely spanwing enemies if you don't arrive at it... CoD, I'm looking at you...), the "it looks open-world, but it's not" style, etc. Everyone plays the same game in the same way, along the same track. We're just missing the on-screen directions of how to move your fingers on the controllers at this point.

This is the evolved version. What's next, you're character dies once and your game is unplayable after? Are we playing 25 cent arcade games for $50?

The nature of the game invites high levels of replayability in order to improve mission scores.

I don't get it. If you can't delete your saved game file or restart the game after you've finished it, doesn't it become impossible to replay the game? Or am I missing a critical concept here?

You can reply the game, but not as a "first time through". Anything unlocked will already be unlocked, anything you accumulated (weapons, money, gold, depending on the specific game) will carry over when replaying parts of the game.

So a person buying it used, cannot start the game new and find all the things themselves.

Good thing is, as far as I know, this really can only fly with a cart based system. I don't see how any game released for the 360 or PS3 would be able to restrict in such a way, since the discs are read only, and save data only goes on a memory card/hard drive.

Concept is that the 'missions' are scored and sounds like there may be a storyline, but it would really just be an arcade shooter with levels. So really, it sounds like it doesn't terribly affect replay value since you can replay each level as much as you want, but still a very stupid move to make.I'm looking forward to a hacked cartridge though as that is really seemingly the only thing that will combat this stupidity. Maybe a device will soon be sold that will allow an erasure (or overwriting of a clean initial cartridge) of saved games for this and future games!

I dont own a DS, but I will not be buying anything from capcom until there is a a move away from such stupidity. The rest of you should do likewise. Companies that made bad choices cannot be rewarded with your dollars.

My problem with this is that $30 normally buys a game cartridge that can be played by myself and then passed on to friends or family. A game that can only be experienced once shouldn't cost the same amount as a game that can be enjoyed by multiple people.

I don't care whether a game has any resale value. I can count on one hand the number of games I've actually resold. But, every game I own has been traded between friends and family. We each buy games and swap.

I don't mind buying a game like Tiny Wings multiple times since it only costs a dollar, but even that game can be played on multiple devices for my dollar.

This happens with my son's leapster games. There's no way to manage saves - keep this in mind if you have children. I'm so glad they didn't think of this in the 90s during the golden era of SNES games.

While I don't agree with this tactic and plan to pay careful attention to where they go with it I personally don't find this specific action as horrible an affront as many other people. The game is primarily a leaderboards based challenge game, so all you do in the game is play through the same area over and over.

Obviously if there are unlocks or anything only the first person through will get the satisfaction of actually unlocking them, but they will still be available to anyone who plays the game, just minus the initial joy of "I found that".

Again, this isn't a move I agree with and if used in a game where more of an impact would be felt it would probably impact my decision as a buyer. In this particular occurence though I find little to actually find offence at, just much to take concern over.

That's a bit of a shitty marketing ploy. Regardless of what they say, the entire industry is, and has been, up in arms over re-sale of games, and I can bet this move is aimed at that. There is absolutely no reason to code this feature into a game, other than to restrict the attraction of buying it used. Worse, Gamestop doesn't have much of a return policy for used games, so if an uninformed buyer picks this up and the previous owner beat the entire game....that's literally wasted money.

Fact is, they aren't entitled to profiting from the same copy of the game twice. They aren't buying back the used game, so why should they get an additional cut of the second/third/n'th sale (this relates more to the codes used for online play, making you pay twice, essentially, if you buy a used game, but still).

I would have to think/hope gamestop would put disclaimers or tell the customer if they were going to buy one of these used games. Or if they wanted to take a stand, refuse to carry the game new in their stores.

True, but I wouldn't put it past them for two reasons:1) More profit. Plain and simple.2) The simple fact that some employee's may no know it. I doubt the box is going to come stamped saying "Don't buy this used, you can't start a new game," and not every employee keeps up with every aspect of every game; usually its just a playthrough (not even, sometimes just reading a review or two) to get acquainted enough to provide feedback if a customer asks.

The nature of the game invites high levels of replayability in order to improve mission scores.

I don't get it. If you can't delete your saved game file or restart the game after you've finished it, doesn't it become impossible to replay the game? Or am I missing a critical concept here?

You can reply the game, but not as a "first time through". Anything unlocked will already be unlocked, anything you accumulated (weapons, money, gold, depending on the specific game) will carry over when replaying parts of the game.

So a person buying it used, cannot start the game new and find all the things themselves.

Good thing is, as far as I know, this really can only fly with a cart based system. I don't see how any game released for the 360 or PS3 would be able to restrict in such a way, since the discs are read only, and save data only goes on a memory card/hard drive.

By having the saves online and forcing players to register. This is far fetch but (sadly) not out of reach from some publishers. They can even advertise it as "Your saves anytime, anywhere. Never have to worry about it ever again !" (until they pull the plug on the server, that's it).

i would have loved to see the process that implemented this, from the first guy that raised his hand and said "why dont we just make the game playable one time?"

[some months later]

in other news, Gregg Hotz aka "GeoHotz" has released a program to delete the save file and start over again completely. hes being brought to court because Capcom says "thats not the intended use of the game you bought, because its actually still our game youre just kind of renting it. we thought you knew."

This RE game and the Zelda game were about the only 2 things released for the 3DS that have interested me so far. Now I'm no longer interested in the RE game and am not about to buy a system for only 1 game.